A team from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) between February and October 2024 recorded a decrease in the proportion of those willing to endure war as long as necessary for the first time since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia. At the same time, the majority of Ukrainians — 63% — say that they are ready to endure the war as long as necessary.
From the beginning of the great war until February 2024, the situation practically did not change, they say in KIIS. Stable about 71-73% claimed that they are ready to endure the war as long as it will be necessary, another 2-3% said that they are ready to endure another year, and 18-21% answered that they could endure only a few more months to six months.
In the period from October to February 2024, those who are ready to endure the war for just one more year also increased. Now they are already 6%. At the same time, the share of those who can endure even less — from several months to six months — has not increased. Now they are 19%, and in February 2024 it was 21%. However, there were more people who could not answer the question — from 4% to 12%.
"This obviously reflects the general increase in the uncertainty of the future in the eyes of Ukrainians," KIIS noted.
Regionally, uncertainty is growing in the West and in central Ukraine, but in general, the population of these regions maintains high confidence in their capabilities.
However, in the South and East, the dynamics are much more tangible. In the South, from 71% to 57%, there were fewer people who say they are willing to endure a year or as long as it takes. In particular, from 68% to 50%, the share of Ukrainians who are ready to endure as long as necessary has decreased. At the same time, those who say that they will be able to hold out for another few months to six months have not increased much — in February they were 24%, and now 26%. On the other hand, from 4% to 17%, there were more undecided people.
In the East (which includes Donetsk and Kharkiv regions) in February, 3% said they were ready to endure another year of war and another 70% said "as much as it takes." Instead, they are ready to tolerate 10% for another year and as long as it takes — 38%. At the same time, the share of those who will be able to endure only from a few months to six months increased from 23% to 36%, and from 5% to 16%, there was more of those who were undecided.
The above statistics are the results of a public opinion poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology from September 20 to October 3, 2024 using Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATI) based on a random sample of mobile phone numbers in all free regions of Ukraine.
A total of 989 respondents over the age of 18 who lived in free Ukrainian territories at the time of the survey were interviewed. The sample did not include residents of temporarily occupied territories, while part of the respondents are internally displaced persons who moved from the occupied territories. Also, the KIIS team did not interview citizens who went abroad after the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Formally, under normal circumstances, the statistical error of such a sample (with a probability of 0.95 and taking into account the design effect of 1.3) did not exceed 4.1% for indicators close to 50%; 3.5% for indicators close to 25%; 2.5% for figures close to 10%; 1.8% — for indicators close to 5%.
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